- Dr Justin Hastings, expert in terrorism at Department of Government and International Relations, Sydney University

- Nick Gruen, CEO of Lateral Economics.

DR NO

The nefarious scheme: Dr No plans to disrupt the Project Mercury space launch from Cape Canaveral with an atomic-powered radio beam.

Could it work?

Dr Tamara Davis: You could disrupt a space launch with a radio beam. You could disrupt the communications and it's possible you could do strange things to the electronics. Why atomic-powered? I think because it sounds fancy. The likelihood of someone disrupting a launch that way is pretty remote. Launch sites are generally pretty secure and have a lot of space around them so it's unlikely anyone could get close enough to do any damage.

GOLDFINGER

The nefarious scheme: Auric Goldfinger plans to contaminate America's gold reserves by setting off an atomic device in Fort Knox, which will increase the value of his own gold and give the Chinese an advantage resulting from the ensuing economic chaos.

No Mr Bond, I expect you to die: Goldfinger's lust for gold pits him against 007. Picture: UASource: Supplied

Could it work?

Nick Gruen: In the mid-1960s the gold in Fort Knox would have been a very substantial part of the gold supply. From a quick Google search, it looks like it was around 20,000 tons in WWII and around two thirds of the world's gold reserves. As I understand it, a "dirty bomb" would not alter the atomic nature of the gold and it would be relatively straightforward to have people kitted out in lead lined rubber suits to clean the gold up, although it would take some time.

Emergency monetary actions could be undertaken by central banks until that time. The link between the US dollar and gold could have been severed as well, probably temporarily, as occurs in wars. There would be disruption and fear initially – perhaps not unlike September 11, 2001 – but I expect the situation could be stabilised quite rapidly.

THUNDERBALL

The nefarious scheme: SPECTRE demands £100 million in uncut diamonds from NATO in exchange for returning two stolen nuclear warheads bombs.

Could it work?

Justin Hastings: In 1990s it was definitely a concern that Russia's economy and politics had deteriorated. They actually had people walking off with nuclear materials from nuclear facilities because they didn't have any food to eat. They've gotten their act together now. Nowadays, it would be more realistic to have a country like North Korea or Pakistan to totally fall apart and for them to lose their nuclear weapons. In the 1960s this was less of a concern. The biggest concern the US and the Soviet Union had back then was if they had a nuclear submarine sink or a nuclear bomber crash, to make sure to recover all the weapons. There are several cases where that actually happened and they had to do intensive operations to recover their nuclear weapons. There was a fear that the weapons they might fall into the wrong hands.

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

The nefarious scheme: SPECTRE hijacks American and Russian spacecrafts to provoke a war between the two Cold War powers.

The secret launch base in You Only Live Twice may look impressive but in the real world it would be found out pretty quickly. Picture: UASource: Supplied

Could it work?

Dr Tamara Davis: I think this is a big fat no. Mostly because spacecrafts tend to look helluva lot like intercontinental missiles and the powers that be are extremely alert to those sorts of things taking off. Unless you had a new type of rocket that was maybe dragged up by a balloon but even that would show up on radar.

But you could possibly achieve the second part of the scheme, as long as you had the right airlock. But it would still be difficult. If the people inside didn't let you in their airlock, you might have to blow it up, which might end up killing them.

Getting back to Earth would be slightly easier than leaving it because it's possible you'd look like a meteorite or some natural space junk.

LIVE AND LET DIE

The nefarious scheme: Caribbean dictator Dr Kananga plans to create hundreds of thousands of new addicts by flooding the US with free heroin, distributed at his Fillet of Soul restaurants. Kananga believes he'll be able to drive the Mafia out of the drug business with his giveaway and then afterwards be able to charge high prices for the heroin.

Could it work?

Damian Karmelich: I don't think there's any doubt that when governments make products or substances illegal, they are handing a monopoly to criminals. There are many reputable people who would argue that if you legalised the drug trade, you would get rid of the crime that's associated with it. Truth is, if you made heroin legal tomorrow, you wouldn't have criminal gangs selling heroin. Private enterprises would do it cheaper. Look at the prohibition laws in the US.

Nick Gruen: The plan could succeed in the short term. But to profit from it, you’d need to do more than simply cornering the market. You’d need to disrupt your competition as well, and your competition would need to be the kind that would take a long time to rebuild. If Airbus were driven out of the market, it could take some time before another competitor came along. However, the Mafia has few fixed assets and little “human capital” and so would return the moment our evil genius decides to stop the flood and turn it into a drought.

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

The nefarious scheme: Reclusive megalomaniac Karl Stromberg plans to destroy the world and create a new civilisation under the sea by launching nuclear missiles he has stolen from Russian and British submarines.

The villain's plan in The Spy Who Loved Me hinges on this imposing base. Picture: MGMSource: Supplied

Could it work?

Dr Tamara Davis: The two things you'd need to avoid are radiation and the nuclear winter. At the bottom of the ocean there are plants that don't need sunlight and which might continue to flourish in a nuclear winter. So if you want food to eat, it might be possible to get it from the ocean floor. Basically, you'd need a bunker that could sustain you for a long period of time and you'd need to supply yourself with a lot of food and air. If the surface of the Earth is fried and radiation levels are high, then the bottom of ocean would a good place to be, but it wouldn't be completely immune; the ash from the fallout would still contaminate the ocean.

A VIEW TO A KILL

The nefarious scheme: Flamboyant psychopath Max Zorin plans to destroy Silicon Valley by triggering an earthquake so he can control the world's microchip industry.

Damian Karmelich: The Silicon Valley plot in A View to a Kill has parallels in the real world. The Chinese refused to export for a period time rare earths. China is basically about the only country in the world where you could mine them. The thing about these rare earths is they are found in every television screen, every computer and just about every computer chip on the planet. When the Chinese refused to export them, they did it in retaliation over issues they were having with Japan. The notion that you can disrupt very important trade is very real.

Even so, blowing up Silicon Valley would have caused substantial disruption as the facilities there specialised in various chips. But damaged facilities can be rebuilt and the human capital would have largely survived. And since microchips are a knowledge good, it may have been difficult for Zorin to control his own investments in silicon chip manufacture.

The scheme, like so many Bond plots, seems to rely on governments not retaliating. Countries would undoubtedly impose sanctions on the rogue manufacturer, and so Zorin would have trouble monetising his evil deeds.

GOLDENEYE

The nefarious scheme: Former double-0 Alec Trevelyan plans to hack into the Bank of England and steal all the money there before erasing all of the bank's financial records with an electromagnetic pulse, causing a global financial meltdown into the bargain.

Could it work?

Justin Hastings: This is probably the most plausible scheme. To do it, the bank's financial records would have to be in one place, which is unlikely, and to get an electromagnetic pulse like that you'd need a chemical explosive or a nuclear weapon detonated in the atmosphere, which would cause a really big bang.

It would be unusual for a terrorist organisation to do that sort of thing. A lot of terrors will talk about that kind of thing but they haven't demonstrated the necessary sophistication to do it. Right now, the ability to cause physical damage with electronic warfare is something that only states seem to have.

Damian Karmelich: Every day financial institutions around the world, including the major stock exchanges, are attacked by hackers. Undoubtedly some of these attacks are done for fun, but some of them are suspected to be the work of sovereign governments. And governments do it for a simple reason: if you can ruin the financial infrastructure of a nation, you can ruin a nation. Those sorts of cyber attacks are very real and thousands take place daily.

Nick Gruen: Erasing large parts of a country’s financial system would create chaos on a grand scale (although much of the infrastructure would be backed up so you’d need a strategy that would knock out those as well). If the electronic infrastructure breaks down, then the financial system would break down. Whether or not the money the villain has transferred would end up being honoured in such circumstances is difficult to predict, because if important financial system breaks down, others are likely to follow.

TOMORROW NEVER DIES

The nefarious scheme: Insane media baron Elliot Carver plans to use a US military GPS encoder to provoke war between China and the United Kingdom to install a Chinese government more supportive of his plans for exclusive broadcast rights in China.

Mad media tycoon Elliot Carver wants to kickstart a war so he can sell more papers. Picture: MGMSource: Supplied

Could it work?

Justin Hastings: The best historical example of a company pushing a government into war is William Randolph Hearst's involvement in the Spanish-American war. His newspapers were pretty instrumental in forcing the US into the conflict. He was all for it, he pushed for it and in 1898 he got it. His newspapers directly benefited from the war, increasing their readership.

Damian Karmelich: The idea of companies pushing governments into war to benefit their stock price isn't that far-fetched. The history of the 16th and 17th centuries is essentially one of very powerful companies such as the Dutch East India Company propping up governments around the world and encouraging them to engage war so they could acquire more markets. Most wars generally have a commercial element to them.

Nick Gruen: Presumably this would drive up prices. But such a plan would require a degree of lawfulness in the market for it to succeed and I suspect that in this case those harmed would take forceful action to ensure that the protagonist does not benefit.

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH

The nefarious scheme: Unhinged energy tycoon Elektra King plans to increase petroleum prices by triggering a nuclear meltdown in the waters of Istanbul, sabotaging the Russians' oil pipeline in the Bosporus.

Could it work?

Damian Karmelich: These days the world is less dependent on one particular choke point. The idea of oil being controlled through the Middle East or the Bosporus, although true 50 years ago, is just not the case anymore. You could probably push the price up but there are enough other places that have oil reserves that you could keep the oil flow going.

Nick Gruen: Presumably this would drive up prices. But such a plan would require a degree of lawfulness in the market for it to succeed and I suspect that in this case those harmed would take forceful action to ensure that the protagonist does not benefit.

DIE ANOTHER DAY

The nefarious scheme: Colonel Tan-Sun Moon plans to use a new orbital mirror satellite to cut a path through the Korean Demilitarized Zone with concentrated sunlight, allowing North Korean troops to invade South Korea and reunite the countries by force.

Could it work?

Dr Tamara Davis: This is semi-credible. Using this sort technology has been floated as a way to power solar farms. You can use a mirror to focus sunlight but whether you can do it enough to cause destruction, I'm not sure. Maybe.

Justin Hastings: One thing I found fascinating about that plot is that North Korea actually has two ways of getting over the DMZ. The first is just pushing through the DMZ with a huge number of troops and not caring about the casualties caused by all the mines exploding. But North Korea also builds tunnels underneath the DMZ. Every couple of years or so South Korea and the US discovers more of these tunnels. North Korea tries to make them look like coal mines but they are used to channel troops into South Korea. Using concentrated sunlight to carve a path through the DMZ is preposterous but if you look at the real world examples of what North Korea does to penetrate the DMZ, they are in some ways even more bizarre than the Bond movies.

Justin Hastings: A lot of terrorists will engage in business as a way of raising money but terrorism isn't that expensive. A tithe on members and some side businesses are generally all they need to fund what they want.

Damian Karmelich: The challenge with that one is that you'd have to own an awful amount of stock for it to work. When short-selling succeeds it's never the result of one hedge fund's actions. What it tends to be is multiple hedge funds short-selling at the same time. The notion of short-selling to ruin a company is absolutely viable and there have been bans on short-selling in Europe recently because it was bringing companies and nations to their knees. But the idea of one entity being able to pull it off isn't really plausible.

Nick Gruen: Yes, hedge funds do this now. Of all the Bond plots, this one seems the most robust. However, you would need a substantial and highly disciplined operation to bring it about. I can't see how such an outfit would last without disgruntled participants leaving and infiltration from various organisations – like the real versions of the spy outfits that are ironically simulated in Bond movies. It would be relatively easy to identify initial suspects from trading data and then close down their access to the money machine they've built.

QUANTUM OF SOLACE

The nefarious scheme: Wealthy businessman Dominic Greene intends to stage a coup d'état in Bolivia to seize control of the nation's water supply.

Could it work?

Justin Hastings: Look, it happens. The most infamous example is of the United Fruit Company in the 1950s cooperating with the CIA to overthrow the Guatemalan Government. But a more likely scenario would be a business funding a candidate it thinks can win an election and advance its interests. Part of the problem is that if you're a company and you want to stage a coup, it could come back to bite you. Lots of violence could end up destroying your interests. It's always much better for a company to have a candidate they think can win the election or take over in a way that doesn't involve lots of destruction.

Nick Gruen: It seems unlikely, unless you had control of the army and the government, in which case it seems rather mild to just take control of the water supply.

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Comments on this story

Reader of brisbane Posted at 5:49 PM November 20, 2012

If a VERY CRAZY PH D in biology decided to hybridize the flu virus with a more deadly virus such Ebola, they could do it without any problem in several universities.
Then, the virus could be reproduced in a kitchen and finally released in stations and airports. Puf after puf, it would be a planetary catastrophe making several million victims.
It is a miracle it never happened till now. However, it is only matter of time before some military scientist hyper-concerned by wars among super powers and overpopulation loses the plot and releases a virus. Tell me I am wrong.

Jack of Adelaide Posted at 5:45 PM November 20, 2012

I wonder why they left out On Her Majesties Secret Service, as it has a great scheme! Poison the food of the world with hot women, for a pardon and a title!
I reckon it would work, if only because all the governments would be happy to say yes rather than bother with it!

Keith of BondfanofPenrith Posted at 5:08 PM November 20, 2012

The World is not Enough would work, just look at the price of oil now!
Only the slightest hint of war or stopping production in Middle East, North Africa drives up the price.
If Elektra & Co stopped all of Russia's supply in TWINE Elektra would be very very rich from the bomb going off plus she planed to use a Nuclear Sub as the recator. So a big bomb at that.
What about OHMSS with Blofeld's biological warfare I think this could one idea be true
Example Mad Cow deasease, Swine Flu, Bird Flu

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